Buffered bike lanes make bicycling easy

By On November 6, 2010 · 8 Comments

UPDATE: With the post you’re reading and this post, I want to show you what a bicycle lane can do! Also clarified definition of buffered and protected bike lanes in second paragraph.

All of this talk about protected bike lanes made me want to watch some videos! Here’s a clip of my friend and I riding on our first ever buffered bike lanes. As seen on Stark Street in downtown Portland, Oregon.

The next video is about Sands Street (over 1 year old now) in New York City that I’ve been raving about for a couple weeks and months now, since riding on it in late August 2010. One half is protected by a concrete wall, and the other half is semi-protected by having raised pavement and a buffer. A bike lane with only a spatial buffer is not considered protected (like in the first video, above).

Array

People riding their bikes westbound (right side of bike lane) on Sands Street toward either the Manhattan Bridge (turn left, south), or Dumbo Brooklyn and the waterfront (turn right, north).

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  • http://twitter.com/JohnAVance John Vance

    So long as nobody’s allowed to turn across it. There is no location in my city where one of these could be installed AND all turning motions across it banned.

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      Turning motions across the buffered bike lanes don’t need to be banned. They only need to be designed/accommodated into the lane. See these photos:
      -Brooklyn 1 – Parking is still allowed. Driveway entrances are marked but striping on the pavement. Even though the buffer is on the travel side, it still gives more room to the person riding their bike in the lane to ride outside the door zone.
      -Okay, I didn’t upload the other photo yet, but I shall. It’s also from Brooklyn.

      Physically protected (i.e. with a barrier of some kind) bike lanes are a bit different. They must be curb-side and can only accommodate turning movements at intersections.

      • http://twitter.com/JohnAVance John Vance

        You’re mixing several different designs under one umbrella. Buffered bike lanes probably do no harm, although the best place to ride is in the hatched area. Really, the bike lane portion should be the hatched area to indicate that it’s a door zone and not to be ridden in. Note that the design you show discourages merging into the bike lane prior to driveways and intersections, and instead encourages sharp right turns across the lane. This will probably result in an increase in right hook accidents.

        The second video shows a median sidewalk style bike path. The only place this could possibly work is where left turns are completely banned, or bicyclists get a completely separate signal phase which means everyone gets to wait longer for their light. I only see this as a possibility on a very few streets – none in my city.

        • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

          In the photo I attached above, a person driving who wants to turn right should NOT merge into the bike lane (as driving in the bike lane is illegal), but should slow, then stop, and wait for all people biking to pass. Then make a right turn indicated by the curved lines.

          As for the “median sidewalk style bike path,” the people biking on that path do have their own signal phase.

        • http://twitter.com/JohnAVance John Vance

          I can’t reply directly to your comment. If a driver ahead of me does not merge and instead waits as you describe then I’m placed in a predicament. I can trust that he actually sees me and pass him on his right. That’s a recipe for getting crunched. I can stop if possible and wait for him to turn, leading to an Alphonse and Gaston style standoff. I can pass him on his left – the only safe move – but since he hasn’t merged right, I have to move much farther left to do so, and may have to move into the next lane over, which may be an oncoming lane.

          • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

            Replying was a comments limitation I just removed.

            I don’t have a solution for the situation you described. I only mentioned what is ideal, but what is ideal is what rarely occurs.

            If I am riding my bike and the driver ahead of me is waiting for me to pass (or assumed to), I slow down to about 3-5 MPH to ensure I can react without getting crunched.

  • Guest

    This seems overdone and obsessive–Modernist. Bicycle and automobile can and should co-exist without the need to discretely separate them. Unbuffer those lanes!

    • http://www.stevevance.net/planning Steven Vance

      No other change to the infrastructure has shown to increase the number of people riding bikes than has creating safe infrastructure. And separated lanes proven themselves to be the safest.